A Word About Awards

THE HIDING PLACE by Trezza Azzopardi   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2000, Dublin Longlist 2002, James Tait Black Finalist 2000, Women’s Prize Longlist 2001   Date Read: July 4, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Azzopardi brings the immigrant and poverty-stricken underbelly of Cardiff, Wales, during the 1960s to disturbing life as a young child bears witness to the gradual disintegration of her troubled family. Dolores “Dol” Gauci is one of six daughters of Frankie Gauci, a Maltese immigrant, and his Welsh wife Mary. A charming but unlucky gambler, Frankie loses his money, his home, and his share in the Moonlight Café the night Dolores is born. Months later the infant Dol loses most of her left hand in a house fire while her mother is attempting to seduce the rent collector out of his money. For what he sees as the good of the family, Frankie barters away one of Dol’s older sisters, who may or may not be Frankie’s daughter. Out of misguided protectiveness, he gives another in ...

ALL THE BIRDS SINGING by Evie Wyld   Nominations: James Tait Black Finalist 2013, Women’s Prize Longlist 2014   Date Read: January 30, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ The second novel from award-winning Australian author Wyld ( After the Fire, A Still Small Voice , 2009) explores the checkered past of a self-reliant young woman, a sheep farmer.   When we first meet Jake Whyte, she’s tending her flock on an island off the coast of England. This is no Little Bo Peep: Jake is a tall, muscular Australian who can shear a fleece with the best of them. She’s also a loner; after three years on the island, she has no friends. To understand her, we must delve into her Australian past, which Wyld alternates with her English present. In a further twist, Wyld uses reverse chronology for the Australian sections. In the Outback, Jake is the only female member of a team of shearers, contract workers moving between sheep farms. Wyld is at her best capturing their work rhythms and cheer...

BOLLA by Pajtim Statovci   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2023, James Tait Black Finalist 2022, Kirkus Finalist 2021   Date Read: January 26, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Two men fall for each other in the wrong place at the wrong time in this bleak tale of love and war. The third novel by the Kosovo-born Finnish novelist Statovci is structured around the alternating narratives of Arsim, a closeted gay man and aspiring Albanian writer, and Miloš, a medical student. Arsim is in emotional retreat twice over, entering a loveless marriage to hide his homosexuality and treading carefully in Pristina, Kosovo, where he’s an “Albanian in a world run by Serbs.” His furtive relationship with Miloš is exhilarating but short-lived: It’s 1995, and the Bosnian War soon sends Miloš to the front and Arsim to exile in an unnamed city. As the story follows the two into the 21st century, each has suffered badly, and an attempt at reconnection only reveals the depth of the damage. Miloš’ chap...

  A MERCY by Toni Morrison   Award: Nobel Prize 1993   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2010, James Tait Black Finalist 2008, NY Times Finalist 2008, Women’s Prize Longlist 2009   Date Read: December 23, 2023   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Abandonment, betrayal and loss are the somber themes of this latest exploration of America’s morally compromised history from Morrison ( Love , 2003, etc.).   All the characters she sets down in the colonial landscape circa 1690 are bereft, none more evidently so than Florens, 16-year-old slave of Jacob Vaark and his wife Rebekka. Eight years earlier, Anglo-Dutch farmer and trader Jacob reluctantly took Florens in settlement of a debt from a Maryland landowner. Her own mother offered her—so as not to be traded with Florens’ infant brother, the girl thinks. (The searing final monologue reveals it was not so simple.) Florens joined a household of misfits somewhere in the North. Jacob was a poor orphan who came to America to make a ne...

BENEDICTION by Kent Haruf   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2015, James Tait Black Finalist 2013, Rathbones Folio Finalist 2014   Date Read: December 6, 2023   From Kirkus Review: “A  meditation on morality returns the author to the High Plains of Colorado, with diminishing returns for the reader. As the cliché has it, Haruf caught lightning in a bottle with his breakthrough novel,  Plainsong  (2000), an exploration of moral ambiguity in the small community of Holt. With his third novel with a one-word title set in Holt, the narrative succumbs to melodrama and folksy wisdom as it details the death of the owner of the local hardware store, a crusty feller who has seen his own moral rigidity soften over the years, though not enough to accomplish a reconciliation with his estranged son, a boy who was “different” and needed to escape “from this little limited postage stamp view of things. You and this place both.” Or so the dying man, known to all as “Dad” Lewis, ...

LEAVING THE ATOCHA STATION by Ben Lerner   Nominations: James Tate Black Finalist 2012, LA Times Finalist 2011   Date Read: September 26, 2023   On a fellowship in Madrid, Adam is a self-doubting, talented but obtuse writer trying to figure out where he goes from here. That’s basically it. He doesn’t know where he stands with women, with his career, with his future or his friends. This is the inflection point we find Adam in. And as talented as Lerner may be, I didn’t relate to nor like Adam.   I didn’t really care for 10:04 and, honestly, I didn’t really care for this either. I found it repetitive, overly self-conscious and self-indulgent.   Talent, spliff, why can't I get laid, spliff, self-doubt, spliff, poetry, spliff, repeat . I hate to say it but that sums this up for me in a nutshell. I am sure there are those who really appreciate and resonate with his work, I’m just not one of them.  

BEASTS OF NO NATION by Uzodinma Iweala   Award: LA Times Winner 2005   Nominations: Dayton Literary Peace Longlist 2006, Dublin Longlist 2007, James Tait Black Finalist 2005   Date Read: September 17, 2023   How an American was able to capture the horror of a child soldier in Nigeria I will never know. Agu is a young child and after his father is killed and his mother and sister disappear, he joins a militant sect fighting in Nigeria. But all Agu has ever wanted to do is go to school. An adept reader, he spent the better part of his early years begging to be let into the school and he was admitted earlier than most.   With nowhere else to turn and the pictures in his young mind of the stateliness of soldiers, Agu becomes a soldier. He quickly learns the violence and disregard for human life that are required of him. Agu is also subjected to starvation, beatings, rapes and constant fear. For such a young life, the reader just knows his life will always have been ...

BITTER ORANGE TREE by Jokha Alharthi   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2023, James Tait Black Finalist 2022   Date Read: August 24, 2023   Bitter Orange Tree is a multi-generational look at the contrast in opportunities between an Omani woman studying in Europe and a relative who acted like her grandmother who squeezed herself into the role required of her.    Zuhour is studying medicine in England. She is aware of the lonliness, longing and unfulfilled dreams that Bint Aamir endured. Bint Aamir was pretty much a servant hired by Zuhour’s real grandparents. She raised Zuhour’s father, Mahmoud, and then raised Zuhour and her siblings. The great love of her life, though, was Mahmoud, a man she loved from afar but never possessed.   Bint Aamir’s life was challenged from the moment of her birth – abandoned by her parents, blinded in one eye, never able to marry, a lifelong servant to one family. The only reason Bint Aamir plagues Zuhour’s thoughts is because she f...

AMERICAN WAR by Omar El Akkad   Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2018, Dublin Longlist 2019, James Tait Black Finalist 2018   Date Read: August 23, 2023   American War is a bleak look at the U.S. should the north and the south engage in civil war. In El Akkad’s vision, the tension arises over the use of fossil fuels and the subsequent environmental devastation. Civil war seems absolutely plausible in reality, although I doubt it would be over the use of fossil fuels. Our country is just that divided.   Sarat is both the protagonist and antagonist, in turns garnering our sympathy and loathing. She is a twin whose youth is devastated by the loss of her father, the loss of her home and the loss of her twin sister. Through the refugee camps she inhabits throughout her childhood, all she ever knows is struggle, loss and war. She becomes proficient at all three.   Sarat is lethal in her focus and an imposing figure in her physical stature. She is someone to be respected...

FIRST LOVE by Gwendoline Riley   Nominations: James Tait Black Finalist 2018, Women’s Prize Finalist 2017   Date Read: August 21, 2023   First Love is such a frustrating novel because the entire read I wanted to smack Neve upside her head and tell her to just leave. She is married to Edwyn and although I believe she loves him, they are so ill-suited for each other, their relationship can be explained as nails on a chalkboard. Actually, Neve is fine. Edwyn is like nails on a chalkboard.   We are privy to Neve’s background, her relationship with her father who, not shockingly, is very similar to Edwyn. He seemed to delight in other’s pain, was manipulative and violent and there was a brief allusion to molestation? An early relationship with a musician who went in and out of town at random intervals also left her wanting and was never emotionally fulfilling.   And then she settled on and even married, Edwyn. Edwyn is one of those guys that can turn any conversation...

THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST by Mohsin Hamid   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2007, Dublin Finalist 2009, James Tait Black Finalist 2007   Date Read: June 26, 2023   The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a rather brief exploration of the golden ticket of American opportunity through a conversation with Changez, our protagonist, and an unknown dining partner. Changez recalls his modest upbringing in Pakistan, perhaps considered poverty by American standards, privileged by Pakistani standards. He earns the ultimate prize – a scholarship to Princeton – and knows just what this opportunity can behold.   Changez works hard and gains academic success, as well as an interview at one of the most prestigious firms in the business world: Underwood Samson, a valuation firm. In attempting to distinguish himself from the other lucky souls to win a coveted interview, he says he has earned only As in his graduate classes. Unimpressed, the interviewer says everyone they interview has straig...

THE BODY ARTIST by Don DeLillo   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2003, James Tait Black Finalist 2001   Date Read: December 21, 2022   Lauren Hartke is a well-known performance artist married to an older man, Rey, who is also an artist. Ray kills himself after a terse breakfast and a brief exchange about him going for a drive. The police inform Lauren that Rey killed himself in his ex-wife’s apartment. At the time of Rey’s death, the couple had been living in a secluded house in the woods outside of New York City. Against the advice of Lauren’s friends, she decides to remain outside the city in the house they had shared.   Lauren’s grief is immense as any partner who is left behind would be. She wanders the halls of the house, having only the briefest contact with the outside world, disconnecting completely from herself and the physical world. One day shortly after Rey’s death, she hears a small notices coming from an unused bedroom upstairs. As she bravely goes up to e...

THE FLAMETHROWERS by Rachel Kushner   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2015, James Tait Black Finalist 2013, National Book Finalist 2013, NY Times Finalist 2013, Rathbones Folio Finalist 2014, Women's Prize Longlist 2014   Date Read: July 5, 2022   The Flamethrowers is a strange novel in that it’s captivating, particularly the level of detail, but you are never quite sure where you’re headed. Indeed, I still am unsure where I went. Is this a novel about a woman finally finding her own identity? We see a lot of Reno becoming but I don’t quite know what she became.   Having finished her art degree in her home state of Nevada, Reno heads to New York to experience the art scene there. She has a one-night-stand with Ronnie, who turns out to be Sandro Valera’s best friend. Ultimately, she winds up in a relationship with Sandro, who is related to the Valera motorbike family, Reno’s favorite brand of bike. She briefly sets the land speed record in Bonneville on her Valera motorc...

HALF OF A YELLOW SUN by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie   Award: PEN/Open Book Winner 2007, Women's Prize Winner 2007   Nominations: Dublin Longlist 2008, James Tait Black Finalist 2006, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2006   Date Read: November 14, 2021   Half Of A Yellow Sun isn’t a novel as much as it is a saga that will twist you up and wring you out. I am in awe of the detail, the heart, the honesty and the intensity that went into writing this. In a word, I am left speechless.   I never knew of the Nigerian-Biafra War and I once again marvel at human stupidity. I marvel at the waste of life and opportunity and humanity. I continue to be dumbfounded by the pettiness, cruelty and indifference humans can have for one another. Yet, I can’t imagine a world where these things do not exist. For there is no people, no country where this darkness is absent.   Olanna and Kainene come from a privileged background and already begin the war at the top of the pyrami...

MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides   Award: Pulitzer Winner 2003   Nominations: Dublin Finalist 2004, James Tait Black Finalist 2003, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2002, NY Times Finalist 2002, Oprah Book Club 2007   Dates Read: April 8, 2006 & July 10, 2021   So beautiful I read it twice, Middlesex delves into the debate about sexual identity, gender identity, and what makes us men and women. Is it genetic? Cultural? Biological? I think the answer is all of the above. This is a debate that is ongoing in the U.S. as some political factions seek to forever identify humans by the gender on their birth certificates while others are embracing they/them pronouns and can comprehend how some humans can be non-binary. I am in the latter camp.    On an aside, I am mystified why some cannot understand that not everyone fits into neatly defined, black and white categories. In the beautiful diversity and vastness of human experience, of course there will be tho...

A CHILDREN’S BIBLE by Lydia Millet   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, James Tait Black Finalist 2020, National Book Finalist 2020, NY Times Finalist 2020   Date Read: March 22, 2021   The premise of this unique take on the Bible tells of a not-so-distant future where environmental collapse is closer than we think. Twelve children are taken to a large lakeside mansion by their families, which appears as more of a hostage situation than a vacation. The parents are so distracted and aloof that the kids play a game of hiding which kids belong to which parents.   Part Lord Of The Flies, part The Road, the children ultimately end up the mature ones as they ride out a storm, deal with a hostile occupation and prepare for the collapse of civilization.    In a bizarre and clever twist on the Bible, these organized and precocious kids survive a flood, survive in an “ark” of treehouses, a birth in a barn complete with donkeys, the arrival of three magi and assi...

THE ACCIDENTAL by Ali Smith   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2005, Dublin Longlist 2007, James Tait Black Finalist 2005, Women's Prize Finalist 2006   Date Read: December 10, 2020   I just finished The Accidental and I’m not sure how I feel about it. During a family summer vacation to Norfolk, a highly dysfunctional family ends up taking in a stranger, Amber, who turns their lives upside down. The mother, Eve, thinks the husband, Michael, invited her to stay and vice versa. The fact that they never discuss this in any detail goes to show just one facet of their dysfunctionality.   Their children are equally struggling due to a lack of direction. Their daughter, Astrid, is aimless but immersed in photographing and videoing the world, trying to make sense of her 12 year old self and the world around her. The brother, Magnus, is struggling with massive depression, having unintentionally played a part in a classmates’ suicide. This is not something he takes lightly but fee...

ATONEMENT by Ian McEwan   Award: LA Times Winner 2002, National Book Critics Circle Winner 2002   Nominations: Booker Finalist 2001, Dublin Longlist 2003, James Tait Black Finalist 2001, NY Times Finalist 2002   Dates Read: June 1, 2005 & September 24, 2020   McEwan is a brilliant writer and it’s no wonder that Atonement received the recognition it did. Essentially, this novel is about the mistakes of youth and how they follow us into adulthood. In this case, the mistake was egregious with lasting consequences.   Briony is a precocious 13 year old who has just begun to hone her craft of writing. She lives in a largely imaginary world, and lives in a very real world of privilege and rules. She has been harboring a crush on the charwoman’s son, Robbie, who she has professed her love to.   Perhaps out of jealousy and decidedly out of a desire for drama, Briony accuses Robbie of raping her cousin. The only problem is that none of the other characters in thi...

CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell Nominations: Booker Finalist 2004, Dublin Longlist 2006, James Tait Black Finalist 2004, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2004 Date Read: October 13, 2019 Cloud Atlas is an interesting attempt at displaying the various aspects of human nature. As each story progresses, we see the same soul progressing through different lives and how the circumstances of those lives shape the soul's response. From Adam Ewing the explorer, to Robert Frobisher the ne'er-do-well composer, to Luisa Rey the ambitious news reporter, to Timothy Cavendish the entrapped publisher, to Sonmi the enslaved fabricant, and finally, to Zachary the post-apocalyptic villager of Hawaii. Each of these characters wrestle with the truth of their times and the striving for justice in impossible circumstances. Mitchell has claimed that all but one of these characters has been reincarnated as the same soul. If I had to argue which would have been omitted, I would have to say...

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME by Mark Haddon   Award: LA Times Winner 2003 Nomination: Booker Longlist 2003, Dublin Longlist 2005, James Tait Black Finalist 2003   Date Read: January 24, 2019   Every novel has something unique about it – plot, voice, construct – and this one has it all. Written from the perspective of a child with autism, Haddon has created a world where readers get to inhabit a unique mind and achieve a greater understanding of the behaviors associated with a brain that is trying to process too much stimuli. I loved every page of this.   “Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.   Although gifted with a superbly logical brain, for fifteen-year-old Christopher everyday interactions and admonishments have little m...